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Our lemmy messages go through the Mariana Trench along 4000 miles or so long fiber optic cable of 30 000 tons laid at the dark and scary floor of the sea that is like an alien planet to us. (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by to c/casualconversation@lemm.ee
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Pyramids are fucking kids toys compared to this shit.

By comparison ISS mere 400 kilometres above us. ~1/10 of the length of this gargantuan cable going through unknown

Truly a megastructure rivalling the sci fi tropes

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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Have you been following them for a while? Some of my favorites are about the various whale-fall research they do. The ecology of whale-falls and how it changes over the course of decomposition is just so interesting to me. I actually witnessed one being discovered live on stream back in ~2020, which was really special. During lockdown when I was working from home I had a dedicated computer set up to play the stream 24/7 in my apartment, with the volume turned up, so I'd never miss any action.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago (1 child)

    Holy hell this is really fascinating! I read quite a lot about deep ocean but somehow never came across whale-falls. It seems like someone will have many nerdy nights soon :p

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    Bone worms are cool, I could learn about them forever. They have an endosymbiotic bacteria in their roots that secrete acid that dissolves the bone to allow the worm to absorb the collagen, which it digests.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osedax

    And even though a symbiont plays a critical role in its life cycle, the genus Osedax doesn't appear to be named after Dax from Star Trek DS9 (which was released before the genus Osedax was even discovered and categorized in the early 2000's), as Osedax is latin for "Bone Eater".

    Polychaetes in general are just so damn cool. That's the same class that contains the fairly famous Pompeii worm that lives at the deep sea hydrothermal vents.

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